When the Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board unveiled its proposed rules for consumable hemp products, it was déjà vu for anyone who’s watched the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission create a morass of regulations that, on their face, seemed an illegal overreach. The ABC has now taken a law already bloated with contradictions and moral panic and added another layer of red tape that goes far beyond what House Bill 445 actually requires.
HB445 itself is a Frankenstein creation, cobbled together in haste and hysteria. It was sold as a measure to “protect the children,” which, in Alabama politics, is the catchall excuse for any law that strips adults of their freedom of choice. The irony is that the same teenagers lawmakers claim to be shielding are better at finding loopholes and workarounds than the men and women who pass these laws. A 14-year-old with a smartphone can find what he wants faster than a legislative committee can write its next “emergency fix.”
This is not the first time we have tried to legislate away freedom. The Prohibition era was supposed to make America safer, healthier and more virtuous. Instead, it bred corruption, fueled organized crime, and turned ordinary citizens into outlaws for enjoying a drink. Supporters like the evangelist Billy Sunday thundered that “the reign of tears is over” and promised that prisons would be turned into factories. President Herbert Hoover called Prohibition “a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose.”
Yet history proved them wrong. The experiment collapsed under the weight of its own absurdity, leading critics like H.L. Mencken to note with typical bite that “Prohibition has not only failed in its promises, but has added to the sum of human misery.”
The same blindness drives Alabama’s hemp debate today. HB445 already limits THCA content, packaging and labeling, but the ABC has decided to pile on requirements that make compliance nearly impossible. Retailers and manufacturers are told they must file monthly reports, even if no sales occur, install child-proof caps on hemp beverages, and lock products away so thoroughly you’d think they were regulating plutonium instead of gummies and seltzers. Meanwhile, alcohol—by any measure more harmful and widely abused—faces none of these restrictions. Jack Daniels does not come with a child-proof cap. A six-pack of beer is not hidden behind glass with a warning sign screaming “danger.” Lawmakers once showed at least some understanding of how the real world worked; now Representative Andy Whitt has marched his hemp bill forward with the zeal of Carrie Nation’s hatchet-wielding crusade, wrapped in the self-righteousness of those unrepentant know-it-alls who, by their very presence, are a buzzkill to anything that might bring a little pleasure.
The hypocrisy is glaring. Just a few years ago lawmakers encouraged hemp as a promising new industry. Farmers were told to invest, retailers were told to prepare for growth, and consumers were told they had a safe, legal choice. In a short space of time, lawmakers turned a promise of prosperity into a sentence of prohibition. Meanwhile, every high school student in Alabama already knows exactly which parking lot offers beer or which older sibling has weed to spare. If a kid wants it, he’ll get it. What these rules actually do is punish adults who are trying to operate legally, responsibly and openly, while driving more commerce into the black market.
And here is the part no lawmaker wants to say out loud: in Alabama, adults are free to get drunk as Cooter Brown in their own homes or to drink themselves silly in bars and restaurants. As long as they do not drive or cause a disturbance, they can indulge to their heart’s content while their livers dry up like beef jerky. That is considered acceptable adult freedom. Yet those same lawmakers clutch their pearls at hemp, a product with far fewer dangers than alcohol.
Alcohol kills nearly 178,000 Americans every year—three million worldwide. Hemp? Not a single documented fatal overdose. The numbers are not even close. One destroys families and fills cemeteries, the other offers relief from seizures, anxiety and chronic pain. Yet guess which one lawmakers defend and which one they ban.
The consequences are plain. HB445 does more harm than good. It endangers the livelihoods of hemp growers, small retailers, their employees, and the tens of thousands of Alabamians who legally use these products. It pushes commerce underground, where there are no labels, no child-proof caps and no oversight at all. Republican lawmakers know this, which is why they don’t want to talk about it. I’ve asked them. They shrug, look at their shoes and change the subject. They know they’ve made a mistake, but in politics, nothing is more dangerous than admitting you were wrong.
The truth is simple. Hemp is not alcohol, but in terms of harm and consumption, alcohol dwarfs it. The state’s rules for hemp are stricter than those for liquor, beer or wine. That is not regulation—it is prohibition dressed up in child-proof packaging. And prohibition never works.
We’ve seen this movie before.
HB445, and now the ABC’s overreach, is not about children. It is about control. It is about politicians’ fear of freedom, fear of admitting they do not understand the world they legislate. Alabama does not need another Prohibition experiment—we already know how this story ends. It does not end with safer kids. It ends in backrooms, with bootleggers, and with hypocrisy stacked higher than a liquor store shelf.
